Are you ready to explore?
Today we are going to go beneath the surface of the end result and look at where coaching can have the most impact with a client.
Through my experience I have witnessed behaviour as a symptom of the problem not the actual problem itself.
Clients will come to sessions with their complicated stories, and unhappiness about what results they are getting or not getting in their life.
Quite often this unhappiness is masqueraded as patterns of living and behaviour with negative results for them.
The interesting dynamic is that within coaching the focus is quite often put on the behaviour itself and trying to change this, which is deemed the way forward, and way out of the quagmire of unhappiness.
One of the biggest faults within coaching is the reaction from the coach to immediately start to formulate an action plan with the client or a measurable goal that can be worked on and achieved.
How is this a problem?
The issue here is that unless we spend time with the client helping them to identify what these behaviours are fuelled by we could be missing key areas of development within the coaching session.
We behave in the world and interact with others based on our values (how we see ourselves and what is important to us) also our beliefs, which you will know by now can be adopted, from others, absorbed, added to and generally taken on board from many different people, places and experiences.
Also underneath the surface will be our filters of experience based on our created perception and reality of how we think we should be and behave and also how others might perceive us.
Quite a task you might think, to help a client untangle some of these structures of experience.
If we don’t are we really helping them to change?
Within transformational coaching we need to fully understand our clients on these levels and start to explore what meaning they are giving to their lives based on how they see situations as true.
When someone is acting in way that causes them to be unhappy we need to look at what drives these behaviours not just at the behaviours themselves.
The good news is that the client will be an expert in their life but may not be living in the most positive way.
As a coach we can start to look at untapped potential, forgotten resources and accomplishments and also (as you may know) people can over look the good stuff, the things they are doing well and positive parts of their lives.
People can look at their lives with an element of doom “everything is always bad” and tend to ignore the positive, scan for what they fear, overgeneralize and generally look at situations through negative tinted glasses!
When we coach on the level of meaning this is like holding a mirror up to the client, we create a reflective person centred experience which takes into account the client holistically.
They start to see themselves in all their complicated glory and can then start to move forwards from this with a renewed zest for life and wanting to not just change but also transform their lives in amazing ways.
When you coach don’t just paddle on the surface but dive underneath to explore what exists beneath the surface.
Exploration is key, being able to hold space is important and ultimately helping the client to work out how they do what they do before getting the results that they are currently getting is where the impact can be most understood for the client.
